Frequently Asked Questions

A physical infrastructure through which Internet service providers (ISPs) and business, universities exchange Internet traffic between their networks to keep local Richmond traffic local.

Reduces the portion of an ISP or business, universities traffic which must be delivered via their upstream transit providers.

Reduces the average per-bit delivery cost of their service.

Improves routing efficiency and keeps local traffic local.

What is peering?

Peering is a voluntary interconnection of separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the users of each network. The primary reasons are cost, latency, keeping local traffic local and bandwidth. Neither party pays the other in association with the exchange of traffic.

Traffic passing through an exchange is typically not billed by any party, whereas traffic to an ISP’s upstream provider is.

The direct interconnection, often located in the same city as both networks, avoids the need for data to travel to other cities (potentially on other continents) to get from one network to another, thus reducing latency.